Kidfluencer or Exploited Child

Am I the only one who finds the rise of ‘kidfluencers’ to be weird and creepy.

To the uninitiated, a kidfluencer is some child who is pushed onto social media by parents seeking to make a buck off the ‘cuteness’ of their special little child.

It’s a bit like the teeny-tot beauty pageants that allow overweight mums to live vicariously and fulfil their pageant dreams through their children.

What’s more interesting is that a lot of the people who whine about fast food and toy advertising during children's television programming, allow their kids to be socialised by the fakeness of social media.

The professional influencer, no matter what the age, is a total fabricator.

They spend hours creating the ‘perfect image’ with more than a little help and pretend it’s all real life. It’s not.

You want to make your friends think you fly on private planes….just hire this studio for around AUD $100 an hour.

Want to show off the perfect holiday? Spare yourself the risk of quarantine with Fake A Vacation. Here's an example of their work.

Or what about showing off your toned physique…like these two…I see it’s raining enough to soak their shirts but their hair is strangely dry

….and then of course there’s the mega famous faker Kylie Jenner.

Here she is on Instagram one day and here’s how she looked on TV that same day. Almost, nearly...well not really the same at all!

Anyone still think this garbage is real?

It’s no more real than these two children, Mia (5)  and  Tatiana (3) who are social media 'stars' and apparently very keen on fashion week.

According to their parents, apart from being a meal ticket, these two kids live a very normal life, when they are not attending fashion week or similar events like a bunch of other products with pushy parents.

Here’s Taylen Biggs…..cosying up to her friends Kehlani and Rico Nasty…I’d never heard of them either but one of them released the track ‘smack a bitch’ so is clearly a great role model for the child.

Here’s coco_pinkprincess living her normal life in some sort of igloo  and zooeyinthecity who’s bemoaning "it's Sunday morning and bae says lets go to the farmers market".

It all seems a bit much but it’s an extremely lucrative gig for some parents…who are legally entitled to the child's earnings….mostly because the children themselves are not allowed to have Instagram, Youtube or Facebook accounts because they are too young.

So is this child exploitation? Is it ethical – for parents or advertisers?

After all, some advertiser are banned from targeting children but if that's the case who are these kidfluencers meant to be targeting…creepy adults who like watching children pretend to be grown ups?

It reminded me of the furore over the Bill Henson nude children pictures. They’d likely be deemed illegal if they weren’t called art and hanging on the wall of a former Prime Minister.

Child exploitation is wrong and I remain to be convinced that a kidfluencer isn't simply an exploited child.